NEW INTERSTELLAR OBJECT-ATLAS/31

A new Comet known as 31/ATLAS ( Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System) is approaching the solar system.....this was spotted by Astronomers on 1st of July.... 

So many comets appear and disappear but the thing that is special about this comet is that it does not belong to our solar system and is coming into it from interstellar space....which means it is from another star.....till now our telescopes had an opportunity to view only 2 such objects from close quarters and they are the Comet "Oumuamua" in the year 2017 and 21/Borisov discovered in the year 2019.....that makes it only the 3rd interstellar object entering our solar system...

This would give our Astronomers a good opportunity to study an object from another star and not the sun ....

The comet is travelling in a hyperbolic orbit which would carry it away from our solar system and it is therefore once in a lifetime event....it is travelling at a speed of 58 Km/Sec relative to the Sun...it only has a diameter of about 1Km...its closest approach to the Sun would be on 29th October at which time it would be at a distance of over 20 crore Km from the Sun...

We say relative to the Sun because the entire Universe is in motion and only the relative speeds of such an interstellar object can be measured.....

Our earth revolves around the Sun and so does the entire solar system.....in turn the Solar system revolves around the centre of our Galaxy the Milky Way at a speed of 230 Km/Sec....

The Milky Way Galaxy in turn is in turn moving at a speed of about 580 Km/Sec.....also it is continuously expanding....

So in the Universe everything is in relative motion and the speed of any object can be measured only by reference to a particular point....we take that relative point as the Sun because that is valid for us to perceive....

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE- A WONDER!!!

 The Hubble Space Telescope is telescope in space. It was launched by NASA in the year 1990 to explore and take pictures of the stars and galaxies.  It is named after the American Astronomer Edwin Hubble and has a 94 inch diameter lens. It cost about USD 5 billion at the time of its launch. It has already completed 30 years of service and is likely to be operational till the year 2030-40. It cost NASA USD 5 billion in 1990 and if built today and deployed its cost would be about USD 20 billion. Subsequently further expensive instrumentation was added by the space missions later. It orbits the earth 547 Km away in space. It has so far made more than a million observations.

Now why does one require a Telescope in space?  It is stationed far above the clouds, beyond light pollution and atmospheric distortions. 5 space missions had reached the Hubble Telescope over the 30 years of its operation which maintained and upgraded its instruments. Hubble Telescopes range extends from Ultraviolet through the Visible and into the near Infrared. This has allowed the telescope to deliver stunning images of stars and galaxies that have inspired people all over the world and changed our understanding of the Universe. Over 18,000 peer reviewed scientific papers have been published on its discoveries.

The Hubble Telescope has changed our understanding of the Cosmos forever by its spectacular path breaking discoveries. It takes pictures of stars and galaxies at huge distances. Actually it takes monochromatic or black & white pics which are later colored as per the elements present and their luminosity by scientists after estimations.   

Following are a few illustrations of Hubble Telescope discoveries: As one sees them, one understands the insignificance of man all the more. One feels eerie to see the “Pillars of Creation” as it is called which is a cloud of dust and gas where innumerable new stars are forming and is 5 light years across. This is considered the most popular photograph taken by the Hubble Telescope. This was how our sun as one of the stars originally formed about 460 crore years ago.  

“PILLARS OF CREATION” IN THE EAGLE NEBULA IN THE CONSTELLATION OF SERPENS. 7000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM THE EARTH. THIS IS A NEBULA MADE OF GAS AND DUST WHERE THOUSANDS OF NEW STARS ARE FORMING. THE LENGTH OF THAT CLOUD IS 5 LIGHT YEARS WHICH IS MORE THAN THE DISTANCE TO THE NEAREST STAR TO US.

HERBIG HARO 901 IS A MASSIVE PILLAR OF GAS AND DUST IN THE CARINA NEBULA, A HUGE STAR FORMATING REGION IN OUR GALAXY SEVERAL LIGHT YEARS ACROSS. 7500 LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM US. IT CONTAINS AFEW MASSIVE YOUNG STARS. THIS PIC IS FAMOUSLY KNOWN AS “MYSTIC MOUNTAIN” . HERBIG HARO OBJECTS ARE BRIGHT PATCHES OF GAS AND MATTER ASSOCIATED WITH NEWBORN STARS.

SPIRAL GALAXY NGC 691-LOCATED 120 MILLION LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH. IT IS BIGGER THAN OUR GALAXY AND IS 130,000 LIGHT YEARS ACROSS COMPARED TO 100,000 LIGHT YEARS FOR MILKY WAY.  

    STAR CLUSTER NGC 330-IN THE SMALLER MAGELANNIC CLOUD- THIS IS A CLUSTER OF STARS 182000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY.

SPIRAL GALAXY NGC 3254-LOCATD 118 MILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY IN THE CONSTELLATION OF LEO MINOR. THIS IS A “SEYFERT GALAXY” WHICH HAS AN EXTREMELY ACTIVE CORE WHICH RELEASES AS MUCH NENERGY AS THE REST OF THE GALAXY TOGETHER. SUCH GALAXIES HAVE SUPER MASSIVE BLACKHOLES AT THE CENTER.  

 STAR CLUSTER NGC 330-IN THE SMALLER MAGELLANIC CLOUD- THIS IS A CLUSTER OF STARS 182000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY.

SPIRAL GALAXY NGC 2276 IS A GALAXY IN THE CONSTELLATION OF CEPHEUS. LIES 120 MILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM US.

 GALAXY CLUSTER ACO S 295. THIS IS A CLUSTER OF GALAXIES (AND NOT STARS) LOCATED AN ASTOUNDING 3.5 BILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY. THE IMAGE OF THE CLUSTER IS PEPPERED WITH STARS IN THE FOREGROUD. THE CLUSTER HAS A MASS THAT IS THOUSANDS OF TIMES MORE THAN THE MILKY WAY.

GLOBULAR CLUSTER NGC 6380- STAR CLUSTER IN THE CONSTELLATION OF SCORPIO. DISTANCE 35500 LIGHT YEARS. GLOBULAR CLUSTERS ARE A GROUP OF STARS IN SPHERICAL SHAPE HELD TOGETHER BY GRAVITY. THE VERY BRIGHT STAR ON THE TOP LEFT IS HD159073 WHICH IS ONLY 4000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM THE EARTH IN FRONT OF THE GALAXY.

DIAMOND NECKLACE-INTERCATION OF 2  DOOMED STARS. PN G054.2-03.4 ALso KNOWN AS NECKLACE NEBULA LOCATED 15000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY FROM US. FORMED BY TWO CLOSELY ORBITING SUNLIKE STARS. WHEN ONE OF THE TWO STARS AGED AND EXPANDED THE OTHER SMALLER ORBITED IT. THE MASSIVE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THE TWO PROXIMATE STARS HAVE GIVEN RISE TO THE DIAMOND EFFECT.

 

LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

 It is fanciful to think that many such life forms like those on Earth exist in the Universe and those have given rise to the myriads of stories about aliens to us.

Earth was once considered to be the centre of the Universe, with humans being the epitome of perfection, but are we really the perfect product of evolution?

When we do not know the facts, we tend to generalize things and try to bring them into our own thought to make things easy for us to understand. But those principles that we hold sacred may not hold for other forms of life. We tend to straight jacket life into a particular familiar pattern.

We initially assumed that earth was the centre of the Universe which is today exploded to bits by newer findings over the millennia. Today we know that earth is but a tiny speck of dust moving in space, utterly insignificant in the Universes’ scheme of things.

That is why in our way of thinking and definitions we search for life, and thus far our search has not yielded anything that can be remotely considered as life as we define it on the earth.

Earth teems with life whether it is in the steaming pools coming in from the earth by way of sulphur springs or even in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. Life started fairly recently as per Geological time scale, yet it abounds everywhere on earth.

But the in the past, earth has been radically different from the climate and atmosphere on the earth we have today. Initially it had been lava covered rock with a poisonous atmosphere, a world of oceans with bare microbial life, later a steaming tropical planet with huge dinosaurs and finally came the cave dwelling humans. It passed through many stages and life as we know slowly evolved.

Now, technically life cannot be an accident that occurred only on earth. It should have also occurred elsewhere, but mankind searches for life that is akin to it as per its definition on earth. Movies portray aliens like lizards with horrendous looking features looking exactly akin to our physical structure with a head, a torso, hands and feet.

Is it necessary for life to resemble the way we look? It may look like a sphere, or a cylinder or a block which uses other ways to move than hands and legs. Its physiology may be utterly different from us and its internal organs need not resemble ours in any way.

When we search for life, we essentially search for life as we know on earth in an anthropomorphic way. Perhaps that is why we are failing to spot life elsewhere. The way other forms of life perceive and communicate may be totally different from ours.

We use radio waves for communication, so we send out radio waves into the Galaxy hoping that if there is life elsewhere they would be spotted by them.

What if they do not use radio waves for communication and use some other principles that is unknown to us (say Z waves)? What if they find the principle being used by them is the most appropriate for long distance communication and radio waves are not perceived by them at all.

Hence, just like us, they would be looking only in the Z waves for interstellar transmission and not through Radio waves.  Similarly another civilization on another planet may be using a third principle which is unknown to both us as well as the 2^nd civilization mentioned above.

Organisms in different planets because of their evolution may perceive things differently from us and their organs register something else which we cannot. They in turn may not be able to perceive what we do.  

This may well be the reason we are not finding another civilization. We look for life forms and perception resembling our own, with also the same mistake being committed by them. That is why we cannot find each other.

It is both improbable and impossible to assume that we are alone in this Universe. Therefore the only logical explanation is the difference of methods and perception that is foxing us all. Now is this barrier of perception insurmountable?

As of today that appears to be so. Our planet is only about 450 crore years old and there would be planets as old as 1000 crore years (The Big Bang occured about 1380 crore years ago). In the evolutionary ladder, civilization on such planets should be crores of years ahead of us, yet no contact yet, so is it that the communication barrier is insurmountable because of differences in perception?  

 

COMETS

 Since time immemorial Comets have played on the feelings of humans. They were considered to be an ill omen to oncoming disastrous events. The oldest mention of a Comet was made in the Epic of Gilgamesh which is the oldest written epic in the world. This was written down on tablets way back in 1600 BC in the Akkadian language.

It is better to look at Comets scientifically as astronomical bodies ignoring those myths.

However, before knowing about Comets we also have to know what are Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud. 

KUIPER BELT: An imaginary disc in the outer solar system originating from the orbit of Neptune from 20 AU (AU-Astronomical Unit-Distance from Earth to Sun 147 million KM) away and stretches up to 50 AU in space.

Like the Asteroid belt it contains remnants from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago and is composed of frozen methane, ammonia and water. This is also home to the dwarf planets: Orcus, Pluto (now classified as a dwarf planet), Haumea, Quaoar and Makemake.

More than 100,000 Kuiper belt objects with over 100 Km diameter are supposed to exist. 

OORT CLOUD: This is different from the Kuiper belt and it stretches from 2000 AU from the earth to 200,000 AU.

The collective objects from the Kuiper belt and the Oort Cloud are known as Trans Neptunian Objects or TNO’s.

Comets are bodies of icy frozen gases, rocks and dust left over from the formation of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago. They orbit the Sun in highly elliptical orbits that in some cases take hundreds of thousands of years to complete.   

As a comet approaches the Sun it heats up to turn the ice into water vapor, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and other trace substances which become visible to us as the Comets tail. While some comets contain more ice, others contain more dust.

As of now the number of known comets is 3743 although billions of them may be orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt & the Oort Cloud.

A comet consists of a Nucleus, coma, hydrogen envelope, dust and plasma tails. As the Comet approaches the Sun it gets heated up by the solar winds and a part of the frozen gases melt and form its tail. In some Comets the tails only consist of dust. The tail always points away from the sun due to the Solar winds.

We can see a number of comets with the naked eye but most of them are small and have to be viewed through telescopes. Comets leave a trail of debris along their paths and may lead to meteor showers on Earth.

Comets are classified according to the duration of their orbits around the Sun.

Short period comets complete one orbit in 200 years or less.  Long period comets take more than 200 years.

There are some comets that are not bound to the sun and their orbits take them out of the solar system. They are called single apparition comets.

Scientists believe that short period comets originate from the Kuiper belt and the long period comets come in from the Oort cloud.

Some Comets known as sun grazers smash right into the sun or get so close that they breakup and evaporate. Some researchers believe such comets may pose a threat to the earth as well.

Comets are generally named after their discoverers.

The Halleys comet is the most famous in the world. It becomes visible to the naked eye every 75 years. It last flew near the earth in 1986. The Halleys comet is only 15 Km long.

In 1994, the comet Shoemaker Levy collided with Jupiter with Jupiter's pull ripping it apart resulting in 21 visible impacts.

The largest collision among them created a fireball that rose 3000 Km above Jupiter's cloud tops. It exploded with a force of 6000 giga tons of TNT.

In 1997, the comet Hale-Bop came to 197 million Km from the earth and was about 30-40 Km across.

In 2021 scientists have discovered the largest comet ever seen known as Bernadinelli-Bernstein. The comet is about 100 to 200 Km across. This would make its closest approach to the earth in 2031 but would still pass at a great distance.

EARENDEL-FARTHEST KNOWN STAR TO THE EARTH.

 The star EARENDEL was discovered in March 2022 by the Hubble Space Telescope. But the properties of the star and its brightness are now better revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope. The star lies in the Sunrise Arc Galaxy.

The star is found to be twice as hot as the Sun and about a million times brighter than it. It is located 12.9 billion light years away from us and is the farthest star known to us. The Big Bang with which our Universe originated occurred 13.9 billion years ago, so the star got formed just 1 billion years after the Big Bang. A Light Year is equal to about 9.46 lac crore Km.

Actually when we see stars, we see through time. We are now seeing EARENDEL as it was 12.9 billion years ago. However, as the Universe is expanding the star would now be 28 billion light years away from us.

Actually at such enormous distances like 12.9 billion light years, a single star, however bright it may be, would not be visible to our telescopes. However, Gravitational lensing and magnification by a massive Galaxy cluster known as WHL0137-08 which has thousands of Galaxies in it has made EARENDEL visible to us through both the Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescopes. 

To put it in perspective our Galaxy the Milky Way is an average Galaxy and has 100,000 crore stars in it. Hundreds or thousands of such Galaxies form a Galactic cluster. 

GRAVITATIONAL LENSING:  Extremely massive bodies bend the light from the objects behind them. When light passes through such a body, it behaves as though it is passing through the lenses of a telescope highly magnifying its  brightness.

GHOST PARTICLES

 What are the Ghost particles and why are they so named?

We know the electron which is negatively charged and has a minute mass. 9.11* 10-31  Kg. While the Neutrinos are electrically neutral, they have a mass of only 1.25*10-35 Kg.

That means the weight of a Neutrino is about 73000 times less than that of the Electron when the Electron itself has a minute mass. They are produced in the process of decay of the heavier particles.

Since these particles are electrically neutral, they do not interact with anything. They are the most common particles in the Universe.  

They are tough to detect because they rarely collide with atoms.

Because of their lack of electric charge and their minute mass, about 100 trillion, neutrinos pass completely harmlessly through our body every second. In our numerals, this figure would be 1 crore crores. And that many neutrinos pass through our body each second without us even noticing it.  

Sometimes Neutrinos interact with water molecules. That is why China is building an underwater ghost molecule telescope in the South China Sea.

Currently, the largest Neutrino detecting telescope is developed by the University of Madison and is located in the Antarctic. Its sensors span around 1 cubic Km, and China claims its telescope will span 75 cubic Km when completed in this decade.

Scientists do not know why the massively abundant Neutrinos act the way they do. They defy the established rules of Physics.

 There was a time when people thought they knew everything about fundamental particles when they came to know about the Electron, Proton and the Neutron.

But as science and research progressed the number of fundamental particles expanded. With what is known as of today, there are 31 particles of which 25 are fundamental in the Universe.

Let us see what they are.

Scientists have classified two fundamental types of particles; 

1. Matter Particles 

2. Force Particles.

Some of the Matter particles combine to produce the world around us.

In the force particles one, the Photon is responsible for electromagnetic radiation.

Matter particles are known as Fermions, and the Force particles are known as Bosons.

MATTER PARTCILES or FERMIONS: .

Fermions are divided into 1. Leptons &  2. Hadrons

The LEPTONS  are divided into

1. Electrons,

2. Muons,

3. Tau,

4. Electron Neutrino,

5. Muon Neutrino

6. Tau Neutrino

The HADRONS are divided into 

1.  Baryons   

2.  Mesons

          The Baryons in turn are divided into

           1. Proton

           2. Neutron

           3.  Lamda

           4. Omega

           5. Up Quark

           6. Down Quark

           7. Top Quark

           8. Bottom Quark

           9. Charm Quark

          10. Strange Quark

          The Mesons are divided into

         1. Pion

         2. Kaon

         3. B-zero

         4. Ela C

FORCE PARTCILES or BOSONS: .

The Bosons are divided into

      1. Photon

      2. W- Boson

      3. W+ Boson

      4. Z0 Boson

      5. Gluon

So there are currently 25 fundamental particles in the Universe governing Matter & Force. Of them, 20 are Fermions & 5 are Bosons. 

HUMAN EVOLUTION IN BRIEF.

 Life appeared on the Earth about 350 crore years ago in the most rudimentary form, as a cell and the first organisms were Bacteria.

In 1936 the Russian Biochemist A.I.Oparin has propounded the theory that life originated by Chemical evolution. This theory stood with time and later could be proved in the laboratory 1953 when the 4 amino acids, Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine, the basic strands of DNA could be synthesized. It is today accepted by a large majority of scientists.

Then, Earth was not what it was today. It was much hotter and filled with Methane, Ammonia and Water vapour. Our Sun continuously emits Ultraviolet rays which would completely destroy all life on earth if they reach the Earth. Today we are protected from this deadly radiation by the Ozone layer in the atmosphere, but there was no Oxygen on the earth then and therefore no Ozone. So it would have been impossible for any form of life to exist on the primordial earth then. Then after sometime, due to the ultraviolet radiation and the numerous lightning blasts occurring on account of the heavy cloud cover of water vapour; Methane, Ammonia and water vapour reacted with each other and combined to form the Amino acids which are the building blocks of the DNA and therefore life. This theory was proved by the Stanley Miller experiment.

All animals have been named under the binomial nomenclature. The first word of the nomenclature denotes the “Genus” and the 2^nd the “Species”. All of you know this.

I am giving below a table showing the evolution of humans from their ancestral species.

CLASSIFICATION OF MAN

KINGDOM	ANIMALIA
PHYLUM	CHORDATA	Evolved 540 million years ago. Animals with backbone.
CLASS	MAMMALIA	Evolved 66 million years ago. Animals that suckle their young.
ORDER	PRIMATES	Evolved about 85-55 million years ago. Proto primates like Tree Shrews and Tarsiers and Squirrels. These are adapted to living in tropical forests with large brains, visual acuity, color vision and altered shoulder girdle and dexterous hands.
FAMILY	HOMINIDAE	Separated about 14 million years ago from Primates. Contains 8 extant species. 1. Orangutan (3 species), 2. Gorilla (2 species) 3. Chimpanzee (2 species) 4. Humans. A common ancestor of all these lived 14 million years ago.
SUB FAMILY	HOMININAE	African Hominids
TRIBE	HOMININI	Includes Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos. The Bonobo is similar to the Chimpanzee but is a separate species.
GENUS	HOMO	Evolved from Hominidae 2.5-3 million years ago. It consists of Australopithecus which evolved into various species. It started with Homo Habilis.
SPECIES	SAPIENS	This is our species that evolved about 300,000 years ago. This started evolving from Homo erectus about 500,000 years ago and crystallized 300,000 years ago. All other species in the Genus Homo except us have died out.

 

Between the ORDER of PRIMATES, and the FAMILY of HOMINIDAE is the INFRAORDER SIMIFORMES. This infra Order contains both Monkeys and Apes. The ancestors of humans at that time were similar to apes only and are combined in this infra order.

Our Genus Homo started with Australopithecus about 2.5-3.0 million years ago in East Africa. It then separated from its Tribe named Hominini which includes Chimpanzees.

Next to come in after Australopithecus was Homo Erectus, which was a species of the Genus Homo. This came into being about 2 million years ago. It had a human like gait and body proportions. It is also the first human species to have exhibited a flat face and a prominent nose. It is the first animal to walk erect.

This evolved into various species of man. Firstly, African population of Homo Erectus has given rise to many species. Homo Heidlebergensis (ancestor of Neanderthal man), Homo Antecessor, Homo Denisova, Homo Neanderthal and finally the modern humans. The Asian Homo Erectus evolved into Homo Floresiensis and Homo Luzonensis. The time of disappearance of Homo Erectus (last identified was Solo man from Java) was about 110,000 years ago. Thus the species of Homo Erectus existed for almost 2 million years which is a very long time for us. 

Our species the Homo sapiens is the only species currently living in the Genus Homo. It evolved at about 300,000 years ago. Since Homo Erectus was alive till 110,000 years ago that means our ancestors and the Homo Erectus (including Neanderthal man) lived on the earth at the same time. Yet all other species of Homo Erectus became extinct leaving us all alone in our Genus. Why so we do not know?

Thus the evolution of man which started with Chordata 540 million years ago took so much time to evolve into our species 300,000 years ago. 300,000 years is like just yesterday in Earths chronology.

Our species is so young, yet in such a short span it has managed to dominate the planet like no other species had done. What is the reason for this phenomena we do not know? Yes it is intelligence that made us supreme, but why did some other species too not develop intelligence and why our species alone?

The first city humans ever built was Jericho which dates back to 9000 BC. So for almost 290,000 years of the existence of our species, we did not develop any higher civilizations, but it took us just 10,000 years to dominate all other species and virtually rule the earth.

Now going ahead would humans destroy themselves? To me it appears very much probable. We already have Nuclear weapons and we cannot even imagine what weapons humans would further develop in the future. The rapid development of our race had undergone seems to be pushing it to the edge. In the process we not only endanger ourselves, but also endanger all other species on the earth. Would the human race survive? We can only speculate on that and hope that wiser counsel would prevail on our race in the future.

Forget about Monkeys and Apes, it is unbelievable to think that further back, we had a common ancestor with Tree Shrews, Tarsiers and Squirrels.  They also belonged to the ORDER PRIMATES and our ancestor separated from them only between 55 million and 14 million years ago.

Of course if we extend our ancestry back further, we would land at the first single cell that had evolved on the earth. That is an unbelievable fact which actually shocks us. That way, each species of animals and even plants that have evolved on the earth is related to us.